


Eye of the Storm

by CynicalRainbows



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Family Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Soft anna, anne is Tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:15:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24520699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynicalRainbows/pseuds/CynicalRainbows
Summary: Written for a tumblr prompt of Anne becoming overwhelmed during the Megasix.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 95





	Eye of the Storm

It’s been a long week, one of those weeks where everything seems determined to go wrong in as many ways as possible, often at the most inopportune moments. 

Because of this, everyone is more on edge than usual, everyone is irritable: Catalina snaps and Kitty sulks. Jane puts things down with more force than is strictly necessary and Cathy holds her book up in front of her eyes to discourage attempts at communication and flicks pages obnoxiously loudly.

Even Anna, far and away the calmest and least rufflable of them all, has started to feel the strain and by Thursday is far gone enough that she actually snaps at Kitty for taking her clothes without asking and then at Jane for taking Kitty’s side. The difference of course is that Anna at least has an excuse because that same evening, she comes down with what is officially called A Cold but that feels (she assures Anne) rather an awful lot like the pneumonic Plague.

Anne is glad for Anna’s sake when she finally agrees to take a couple of days off to recover properly but she also can't help but feel a bit abandoned too. The dressing room isn’t the same without Anna to diffuse the tension and while she normally enjoys Catalina’s company, it scarcely counts as company when all the two do is snap at one another. Anna is like a balm- she smooths out rough edges, she can diffuse almost anything with a joke or a comment. Without her, everything feels ever so slightly off balance.

As bad as the snapping is though, the silence in the dressing room once Anna finally gives in and goes home to bed is worse. Anne knows Catalina isn’t angry with her specifically, that the woman is just not really in the mood to talk and is staying quiet to avoid starting off yet another disagreement, but it still makes things uncomfortably tense.

Even when Saturday rolls around, it isn’t much comfort to think about the fact that Sunday is just around the corner because Saturday is always the hardest day of the week- the biggest workload, just when everyone is least prepared for it, the rowdiest audiences just when everyone is at their lowest ebb, the most hours spent waiting around at the theatre when really all anyone wants is to go home and take a nap.

Sometimes the exhaustion works in their favour, on the days that the tiredness makes everything somehow seem that bit funnier. _Tired-drunk_ , Cathay calls it, when one or other of the queens finds themselves giggling half hysterically over something that in the cold light of a Monday morning would really seem not that amusing at all. At least they get some good social media videos out of it.

Mostly though, being tired just makes everyone shorter and snappier and more prone to storming out of the dressing room to sulk- or cry or walk around angrily slamming doors or lurk in corridors muttering darkly about how much better things will be when they got their book deal and cam write full time.

Nobody is sleeping well, nobody can be bothered to eat proper meals, let alone actually cook them, and they all feel like they haven’t seen the sun in months.

In short, they are in dire need of a day off.

By Saturday’s second show, Anne is almost counting the seconds til she can go home.

She feels like her shoes are made of lead, her head is pounding, her costume is sticking to her uncomfortably and she is bitterly regretting the energy drink she’d downed in lieu of lunch on Cathy's perhaps slightly misguided advice. Not that she can blame Cathy- it’s her own fault for taking advice from a woman who not only occasionally substitutes coffee for milk on her cereal but actually professes to  _ prefer _ it.

The discomfort distracts her and makes her come rather too close- unpleasantly close, _dangerously_ close- to missing a couple of cues during Ex Wives. It’s nothing the audience will have noticed, even if they have seen the show before, and perhaps even the other queens won't pick up on it, but  _ she  _ knows and the thought gives her a horrible flustered feeling, like she’s falling behind and needs to catch up to something.

Except there is no chance to catch up. Sometimes the lack of interval doesn’t bother her at all- they’re all rather glad of it at times because it does away with having to worry about recapturing the audience's attention and goodwill after twenty minutes of all 200 of them getting irritated over overpriced wine and tiny-tubbed ice cream- but now she would kill for five minutes to sit down for a moment and collect herself.

Even the show gets harder as it continues- she's unsettled by having someone who isn't Anna in Anna's place, the songs get longer, the dialogues get more heated and shouty, and Haus of Holbein...well, Haus of Holbein just _exists._

She has never been less prepared for the flashing lights and pounding bass, and even when it’s over, she can feel the tension building up inside herself, the feeling of her last threads of control beginning to dry out, stretch thin and snap.

Finally, finally, they strike their ending poses, fists thrust in the air. Anne can feel her arm trembling slightly and hopes that no one else will notice. She doesn’t feel like fielding questions off stage.

Although she’s been hoping for a moment to collect herself, the split second of reprieve granted before the music starts again and the Megasix begins, if anything, make her feel more overwhelmed rather than less, as if her body, having tasted peace and quiet for a moment, is protesting bitterly by making everything that much louder. 

The dancing- not even really being able to rely on muscle memory because it’s apparently important that they keep an _informality_ to the Megasix that can only be achieved by insisting that everybody dance freestyle- begins to feel like a rather unusual and exquisite form of torture.

And then the confetti starts and it’s in her face and under her feet and god someone's going to break their neck one of these days and the front row fans are screaming particularly loudly- not just screaming but screaming words too, and as much as she knows they are most likely positive things, the words are lapping over one another like waves coming too quickly on the beach, sucking away her control, and the effort of keeping a smile on her face as she tries to focus on different parts of the audience so that everyone, even those people in further back seats feel included, are making her face hurt and her costume is prickling with sweat and _god_ she just wants to rip it off and someone must have decided now was a good time to give themselves a quick douse of perfume in the front few rows because now it’s tickling her nose, it’s far too strong, and it’s all too loud, too bright, _too much_ , too much for her to deal with all in one go, and in the midst of it all, she feels herself left as small and pink and vulnerable as an oyster, pried open and squirted with lemon juice, cringing in the remains of its broken shell.

When the last note sounds and the stage goes mercifully dark and the curtain comes down, she can't move from her final pose. At last, _at last_ , at last she can breathe for a second- but Kitty is already pulling on her arm and telling her to hurry up, c _ome on, get changed so we can get to the pub_ \- and maybe it’s Kitty shrieking in her ear, and maybe it’s the very sensation of being pulled and maybe it’s the thought of having to endure yet another noisy, bright, crowded space after everything, but to her mild surprise, Anne finds that rather than just pushing Kitty away like she would have had no problem doing normally, she’s wrenching herself away with such force that Kitty lets out a squeak of surprise and then she’s curling up right there on the confetti-strewn stage with her hands clasped so tightly over her ears it hurts and her eyes screwed shut so that she can almost see stars, folded up tightly to protect the very very tiny fragile hold on reality that she still has left.

‘Anne?’

‘Anne are you alright?’

The others crowd round her immediately. 

‘What’s the matter, are you hurt?’

She can't find the words to ask them to be quiet- but when Cathy’s concerned hand presses the scratchy material of her costume harder against her shoulder, she squirms and whines unhappily, cringing away. She’d be embarrassed, she thinks distantly, if she had any space in her head for anything other than panic.

‘…..can’t stay here.’

‘You can’t be thinking of moving her.’

‘It’s horrible to move her if she doesn't want to-’

‘Look she won’t want to stay here either, she’ll calm down quicker if she’s somewhere quiet-’

After a minute or two of bickering, Catalina effectively ends the argument by scooping Anne into her arms and bearing her off to the dressing room.

The added contact, the spikiness of Catalina’s costume, the noise the other queens are making makes her wriggle unhappily in Catalina’s arms but she doesn’t fight _too_ hard, not really.

She isn’t sure what she’d do if Catalina DID put her down. Curl back up into a ball until things got quieter, probably.

In the dressing room, Catalina sets her gently on the carpet- or starts too. When Anne cringes away at the scratchy nylon, Jane spreads Kitty’s hoody and her own coat on the floor.

‘There, that’s better-’

‘What should we do…?’

‘I don't think we should all stay-’

‘Should we leave her alone?’

Their voices are piling up again and it hurts, they hurt, muddling her already overburdened mind, and she’s just beginning to feel a scream tickling the back of her throat when Catalina holds up a hand.

‘Can't we have this conversation in the corridor?’

Cathy nods; Kitty opens the door, casting worried looks back at Anne even as Jane tugs her outside.

And then they are all out into the corridor. 

Cathy makes a brief return to flick off the lights….and then she too withdraws, and Anne is left in peace.

She curls up on her side in the welcome darkness. Her hands are still over her ears but slightly less tightly now. 

Breath. Breathe. Breathe.

She's still shaking, shaking even harder than before. Her teeth are chattering.

Sweat dries on her skin.

The tremors make her arms and legs ache but the pain is almost soothing- something else to focus on, at least.

Slowly, slowly, she begins to relax her tensed-tight muscles, one by one.

At least now it’s quiet.

*

They leave her alone for as long as they can- although really she can’t say how much time has passed- and then the door opens. Light spills in from the corridor.

‘Anne?’

It’s Catalina.

‘Mija, it’s time to go home.’

She curls up tighter and Catalina comes properly into the room, holding the door open with her foot.

‘Anne, it’s getting late. You’ll be more comfortable at home where you can rest.’

She’s afraid that if she moves, all the light and noise of the theatre will engulf her again, flood her and suck her down; she’s feeling better now, she doesn't want to take the risk of moving.

But Catalina doesn’t move. Her face is anguished- she looks pained, unhappy. She doesn't want to be the one having to make Anne move, and it gives her no pleasure when Anne eventually gets shakily to her feet.

On the way to the car, she keeps her distance, gives her breathing room. She asks quietly if Anne would like help when she stumbles and when she shakes her head, she can see how that bothers Catalina too.

She’s not used to not being able to give comfort, she’s used to having to almost peel Cathy off, she’s used to Jane trailing around after her like a shadow. She’s used to being able to _help_.

But she doesn’t press it and Anne is grateful.

*

When they get home, the others are awake and clustered in the living room but the hum of conversation falls silent when the front door opens and closes.

Jane pops into the hall to say that she's welcome to join them if she’d like but that they _completely_ understand if Anne would rather have some time on her own.

She nods but when she goes upstairs it's not her own door she stops at but Anna's.

She knocks, quietly, in case Anna is asleep- and then very gently nudges open the door. She's still shaking slightly.

Anna’s room is half lit from the open laptop on the floor by the bed. The laptop is silent, the darkness is soft and welcoming. All is quiet and calm. She takes her first proper breath in what feels like hours.

Anna herself is dozing- but opens her eyes just as Anne is making up her mind to resigning herself to going back to her own room.

‘Anne?’

She gives a shaky half smile.

‘What time is it?’

She nudges Anna's digital clock to face her: the lighted dial shows nearly 11pm.

She isn’t sure if the others have filled Anna in, if she knows anything at all. (She decides not to ask, she’d rather not know.)

‘Oh’. Anna rolls onto her back and takes some tissues to blow her nose. ‘Are you ok?’

She hesitates, trying to strip away the layers of meaning- she isn't sure whether to say yes or no, so after a minute she just shrugs.

Anna sits up a bit and pats the bed next to her, flipping back the duvet.

‘Want to come keep me company in my bed of sickness?’

She can't be sure but she feels like Anna is deliberately talking more softly than usual.

Suddenly she wants nothing more than to take refuge here, in the peaceful semi darkness, where she has Anna next to her to do her talking for her until she feels up to talking for herself.

She nods.

‘Come on then.’

She crosses the room and gets under the covers in the sweats and tshirt Catalina helped her change into before going to the car. 

Under the duvet, she burrows into Anna's side: it's warm and dark, it feels like a good place to recover.

Anna lies down next to her, fitting her body around Anne's and wrapping an arm around her.

It feels heavy, in the best way. _Grounding._

There's no way she’ll be able to float off into her own head with Anna here.

‘I missed you.’

It’s quieter than a whisper, almost a breath, but Anna hears because she always does.

‘Missed you too, babes.’

Anna’s arm tightens around her; her breath tickles Anne’s neck but it doesn’t bother her as much as it would have done an hour or two earlier. It’s a nice reminder that she isn’t alone.

She closes her eyes, counts her breaths- in and out, like she’s learned to do at times like this- and waits to readjust to the world outside.


End file.
